As a keen recreational cyclist, I love the story of McLaren working with British cycling champion Mark Cavendish and the Specialized cycle brand to produce a killer road bike on which he can compete this season in the great cycling classic events. It had a winning debut with Cavendish’s team mate Matthew Goss this weekend.

Road bikes are all about being light and stiff at the same time. The S Works McLaren Venge, as it is called, is made using state of the art carbon fibre layering techniques and the frame weighs just 930 grammes!

Cavendish who has been 15 times a stage winner on the Tour de France in the last couple of years, rode the bike for the first time yesterday in the Milan-San Remo classic. It wasn’t an auspicious start for Cavendish as a puncture split him off from the lead group and so he wasn’t in the sprint at the finish, his speciality.

There is a precedent; Lotus developed a bike which Chris Boardman used to win a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

McLaren Applied Technologies is doing some quite interesting stuff with athletes in the run up to the 2012 London Olympics, working with UK Sport on a wireless system for storing data and telemetry information for athletes in cycling, rowing and sailing. If British athletes hopefully pick up some gold medals next year, McLaren will be an important part of the story.

Cosworth is very active in this area as well, applying F1 data gathering technology to help sports people from many areas.

Its only the frame that is 930g. The whole bike as ridden in a race has to meet the UCI (the FIA of cycling) specified minimum weight which is 6.8kg. Still very light but every bike in a pro race will be a very similar weight.

Just like F1 really. Some bikes even have ballast added to hit the weight.

The transmission is Shimano Dura Ace D2i. Rather than cables the gear changes are actuated by electric motors. Its quite flash but nothing special. The pros had it all last year and its available to the public as well.

Yeah the Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset is available to the public if you have a spare $4000 US. For me I’ll stick with my Aluminum Alloy frame and 105 group set. There a lot of things I can improve with my fitness and technique before a better bike will help.

The frame weights at 930g, the whole bike must be a lot heavier as Fletch explained above.

Mind you I have got a classic-ish Allan road bike from circa 1990 and it’s duraluminium frame weights at 1030g and whole bike at 7.3Kgs. So 20 years on and there isn’t that much difference in weight. I suspect if it wasn’t for regulations they would have been able to produce much lighter bikes if they wanted to.

I am and I want to add something : Bikes are limited in their minimum weight in cycling in order to make it not too expensive to afford the lightest ones so there’s nothing to gain from carbon fiber. Besides it’s less comfortable than steel or titan frames.

To correct an earlier comment, equipment has always improved athletes performances and times when competing. Brains and strength are involved, but without developments in sport we would still be in the 1950′s. This bike is the next stage in development

… well I hope it helps him, because so far his season hasn’t been that flash. HTC-Highroad may be better putting their eggs in the Goss basket, the way Cav’s form has been in comparison this year. Though, my suspicion is that Cav will be rid of Goss next year, like he was rid of Gripel this year – keeping Renshaw however as his wheel man. Go Australia!
Seriously though, there are a lot of variables in cycling and, whilst I may be proved wrong, I think it’s a bit of a gimic.
Bloody hell, I can’t believe I’ve discussed cycling on your F1 Forum James. If ever you’re in Adelaide we’ll go over some of the TdU routes. You’ll love it!

“There is a precedent; ” Thanks for confirming my twitter comment James, (my memory sometimes works.)
“McLaren Applied Technologies is doing some quite interesting stuff with athletes in the run up to the 2012 London Olympics,”

When my daughter was doing her fine art degree at Chichester there were a lot of “Sports Science” undergrads there (bloody noisy lot too) One wonders if this is the modern culmination of that stream of research; or a completely different approach, though in my mind one cannot work without the other. The “skin” technology now used in championship swimmers’ cozzies is something I have long thought would be brought into F1.
(Again something from my youth first seen on “Tomorrow’s World”)

I am very envious of that bike and may genuinely enquire about a purchase, IF (F1 BACKWARDS) the price is even possible. Some Legend Builds like the Lemond special issues were a fortune back in the day. I have mentioned on this site I have other hobbies, well cycling is one of them and watching the Tour come in only a train ride through the Tunnel is one day I really look forward to. I am about to build a very rare Dave Lloyd from brand new, everything from 1996 and still boxed at this time. The artwork he called welding is gorgeous. Lots of carbon & TI. The time when road bikes were just taking on MTB technology and vice – versa I suppose. Good times.

I suppose this would be the only Mclaren I could ever hope to own?

Come on James I do 100 mile a week, can you beat that? It should not be too hard :<)

I am also surprised that the frame is out so soon, that is not cheap but I did not expect it to be. Do you know about the components I assumed they were mostly made by Mclaren aswell to get the bike that light?

No, the components are mostly standard top of the range from either Shimano or Campagnolo.

Campagnolo probably know more about making light parts for a bike than Mclaren, as even the top sprinters can only just get close to 2 Horse Power for a few seconds, rather than the 750 plus that Mclaren people are used to.

Professional road racing is governed by the UCI (triathlon is not) which has set a minimum bike weight of 6.8KG. All the main road bike makers can easily make a bike lighter than this.

It just goes to show how much spin off there is within the technology industry and in particular Formula 1. People say that F1 isn’t road relevant but that clearly is not the case as many innovations etc trickle down into different areas of driving, sports and consumer electronics.

Well indeed Filip and the design aspect is also linked in. The points you have mentioned have plenty of application in the world around us.
But if we look at F1 as a whole we’ll see that things like on board cameras (if I’m not mistaken were pioneered by Bernie and his organizations) anti lock brake mechanisms to name but a few have found important applications in the world outside F1 and not just in sport either.

It’s such a shame that attemps at innovation like the “F duct” and double diffuser get blocked so quickly.

What is with “we” … have you now taken it upon yourself to speak for the rest of the commenters. A little presumptuous, no?

Perhaps other commenters would prefer to carry themselves with a little more decorum, exercise a little more respect for the storied accomplishments of others, perhaps prefer not to be associated with such rude and boorish empty-barrelled behaviors.

I guess what I am saying, men like Ron Dennis achieve and do, while others noisily mash at keyboards on comment threads … there is a very clear and distinct difference between the two, never allow yourself to be confused that one is somehow in any way equivalent to the other.

Completely the wrong place to post this, but I just started wonder, is it allowed to service both cars at once with two pit crews during a race? I’m guessing no since we havn’t seen it before, but still, is it?

I opted for generic brakes as the originals were great except when you wanted to stop.

bike looks cool and colour suits it nicely. you just need to all a little orange as a Gulf homage

I’ve not ridden anything as old as your bike but a friend of mine is a huge advocate of steel frames and has been on at me for some time to restore and old frame. Not sure I have time or inclination so may get something like this insteadhttp://www.cooperbikes.com/T200-steelracingbike.html

James, my other comment was a little off topic so I wanted to make sure this one didnt get taken off with it. You say this was an S-works (specialized) joint venture with mclaren, so my question is what exactly did Mclaren contribute to the party is it just name and paint? o did they let s-works use their autoclave?, or did they get their hands a little more dirty in the designing the venge? If so would this be the only vehicle to bear the MP2 designation?

Beautiful looking bike, but it will be very interesting to know the details of what McLaren’s full involvement is with this project (Design? Materials? Aero? Construction? Marketing?).

Although i don’t know the deatil’s of this frame, 930 grammes is nothing to shout about these days, as there is a variety of mass-produced XC mountain bike frames that are in that ball park (Cannondale Flash Ultimate -950g, Scott Scale 899 -899g, Merida O.NINE – 900g) and these off-road frames have to be able to withstand a lot more stresses, forces and abuse then any roadie frame.

the bike radar link posted earlier by Ian goes into this a bit more, check it out. The power savings are huge…

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Claimed weight for the Venge frame is 950g, with the complete module (frame, fork, seatpost, crankset) tipping the scales at 2.07kg for the McLaren and 2.18kg for the S-Works. But of course, the focus with these bikes wasn’t just on cutting weight.

Specialized have conducted track testing with the Venge against their current top-line race bike, the Tarmac SL3. Claimed watts saved by the Venge range from 3W at 20km/h to a whopping 23W at 45km/h, and presumably a lot more than this at Mark Cavendish’s sprint speed of around 70km/h. Giving a professional rider that sort of advantage is incredible and should be apparent from very early on in the season.

End Quote

now I wonder if they’ll be designing a rack for the back of the MP4-12C?

Ha! Im a big recreational cyclist myself and was watching La Primavera yesterday too, one of the best ones for years, never heard anything about mclaren being involved in cav’s bike though..interesting side note, so mclaren makes specialized’s carbon bikes, or just this one?

mclaren should imo concentrate first on tthe F1 business.they are over extending now.is it any wonder the 12c and these other ventures have come at a time they are struggling to match the drinks maker.RBR.?F1 first dominate there before yelling about these ancilliary businesses.

They need to diversify. They can be never be left in the position again where they’re forced to accept such a large fine.
Besides with all the cost-cutting measures there is only a finite amount of man-power they can quota for F1.

McLaren has a separate division called Applied Technologies which is all about finding new markets for the technology they develop in F1. Helps keep the cash rolling in and useful diversification. Cosworth are busy doing the same and to a lesser extent Williams

Believe Williams are working on a road going version of KERS for porsche. Think it was due to the fact the last time round Williams were the only team to use a mechanical KERS system. it has been 2 years and I still don’t know what they had!!!

My first push bike had a cast iron frame and no gears. On reaching school about 2 miles from home I had to get it down ten steps to the playground level and the bike shed, this was ok going down but carrying the thing up was a struggle since I was a 4 stone weakling with chilblains and hayfever. Don’t know they’re born nowadays. Baah!

Was this for proper cycling, or for going round in circles on a banked wooden track indoors 2mm behind a weird motorbike

I had a Raleigh Chopper, and we stayed at a friends flat for a couple of weeks once – on the third floor. I was only 12 and I had to push that thing up 3 flights of stairs after every use. Once day, coming down, it slipped out of my hands on the last set of stairs and bumped all the way down to crash right into the middle of the neighbours door. Wouldn’t have been so bad, except my brother had cleaned his bike on the balcony the previous day and tossed the bucket of filthy water over the side – right onto the same neighbour’s washing. And, silly me, I was the first to look over the edge to see what all the shouting was about.

Chopper’s were ace. I loved mine. I understand that they are now pretty expensive collector’s items. They remade them a few year’s but H&S regulations made them remove the gear shift from the cross bar. pfft!

I have some great ideas!!! I think that for London 2012 there should be a sprinkler system installed, KERS systems allowed on the bikes, a safety cycler in the event of a crash and mandatory tyre changes with the use of multiple compounds both mountain bike and race types.

The level of interest in pro cycling generally, that this post has generated. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me… the parallels of characters, technology, strategy ,politics and scandal exist across both F1 and Pro Cycling.
However,I have always struggled to find a Pro Cycling equivalent( focused, expert and connected)of the jamesallen on F1 blog. Any recommendations out there.

Cyclingnews.com is very good, more in the autosport mode then James site. For me, twitter is the home of my cycling passion, far better than twitter is for F1. Lots of interesting people, many riders tweet regularly.

That was a bit of a poor choice of words… or maybe I’m just a bit too dark today… anyway off to the political correctness facility for one of us

I do a bit biking, but it’s all mountain bikes and being the commited person that I am I bought a bike a while ago and just ride it in new places rather than scouring the internet for a new one.

So, does anyone know if this thing alredy exists?

Seems logical that an F1 team with all their carbon fibre integrity should go into making it for other sectors of the market. Surely canoing at the like could use atleast a carbon fibre structure to reduce weight and hence help boyancy.